“He is now ready to begin the ceremonies of the morning (sandhya), those which I have just observed on the banks of the river. Minutely and mechanically each Brāhman performs by himself these rites of prescribed acts and gestures. First the internal ablution: the worshipper takes water in the hollow of his hand, and, letting it fall from above into his mouth, cleanses his body and soul. Meanwhile he mentally invokes the names of Vishnu, saying, ‘Glory to Keshava, to Narāyana, to Mādhava, to Govinda,’ and so on.
“The second rite is the exercise or ‘discipline’ of the respiration (prajayama). Here there are three acts: first, the worshipper compresses the right nostril with the thumb, and drives the breath through the left; second, he inhales through the left nostril, then compresses it, and inhales through the other; third, he stops the nose completely with thumb and forefinger, and holds his breath as long as possible. All these acts must be done before sunrise, and prepare for what is to follow. Standing on the water’s edge, he utters solemnly the famous syllable OM, pronouncing it aum, with a length equalling that of three letters. It recalls to him the three persons of the Hindu trinity: Brahma, who creates; Vishnu, who preserves; Siva, who destroys. More noble than any other word, imperishable, says Manu, it is eternal as Brahma himself. It is not a sign, but a being, a force; a force which constrains the gods, superior to them, the very essence of all things. Mysterious operations of the mind, strange associations of ideas, from which spring conceptions like these! Having uttered this ancient and formidable syllable, the man calls by their names the three worlds: earth, air, sky; and the four superior heavens. He then turns towards the east, and repeats the verse[19] from the Rig-Veda: ‘Let us meditate upon the resplendent glory of the divine vivifier, that it may enlighten our minds.’ As he says the last words he takes water in the palm of his hand and pours it upon the top of his head. ‘Waters,’ he says, ‘give me strength and vigour that I may rejoice. Like loving mothers, bless us, penetrate us with your sacred essence. We come to wash ourselves from the pollution of sins: make us fruitful and prosperous.’ Then follow other ablutions, other mantras, verses from the Rig-Veda, and this hymn, which relates the origin of all things: ‘From the burning heat came out all things. Yes, the complete order of the world; Night, the throbbing Ocean, and after the throbbing Ocean, Time, which separates Light from Darkness. All mortals are its subjects. It is this which disposes of all things, and has made, one after another, the sun, the sky, the earth, the intermediate air.’ This hymn, says Manu, thrice repeated, effaces the gravest sins.
“About this time, beyond the sands of the opposite shore of the Ganges, the sun appears. As soon as its brilliant disc becomes visible the multitude welcome it, and salute it with ‘the offering of water.’ This is thrown into the air, either from a vase or from the hand. Thrice the worshipper, standing in the river up to his waist, flings the water towards the sun. The farther and wider he flings it, the greater the virtue attributed to this act. Then the Brāhman, seated upon his heels, fulfils the most sacred of his religious duties: he meditates upon his fingers. For the fingers are sacred, inhabited by different manifestations of Vishnu; the thumb by Govinda, the index-finger by Mādhava, the middle finger by Hrikesa, the third by Trivikama and the little finger by Vishnu himself. ‘Homage to the two thumbs,’ says the Brāhman, ‘to the two index-fingers, to the two middle fingers, to the two “unnamed fingers,” to the two little fingers, to the two palms, to the two backs of the hands.’ Then he touches the various parts of the body, and lastly, the right ear, the most sacred of all, where reside fire, water, the sun and the moon. He then takes a red bag (gomukhi), into which he plunges his hand, and by contortions of the fingers rapidly represents the chief incarnations of Vishnu: a fish, a tortoise, a wild boar, a lion, a slip-knot, a garland.[20]
“The second part of the service is no less rich than the first in ablutions and mantras. The Brāhman invokes the sun, ‘Mitra, who regards all creatures with unchanging gaze,’ and the Dawns, ‘brilliant children of the sky,’ the earliest divinities of our Aryan race. He extols the world of Brahma, that of Siva, that of Vishnu; recites passages from the Mahābhārata, the Purānas, all the first hymn of the Rig-Veda, the first lines of the second, the first words of the principal Vedas, of the Yajur, the Sama, and the Atharva, then fragments of grammar, inspired prosodies, and, in conclusion, the first words of the book of the Laws of Yajnavalkya, the philosophic Sutras: and finally ends the ceremony with three kinds of ablutions, which are called the refreshing of the gods, of the sages and of the ancestors.
“First, placing his sacred cord upon the left shoulder, the Brāhman takes up water in the right hand, and lets it run off his extended fingers. To refresh the sages, the cord must hang about the neck, and the water run over the side of the hand between the thumb and the forefinger, which is bent back. For the ancestors, the cord passes over the right shoulder, and the water falls from the hand in the same way as for the sages. ‘Let the fathers be refreshed,’ says the prayer, ‘may this water serve all those who inhabit the seven worlds, as far as to Brahma’s dwelling, even though their number be greater than thousands of millions of families. May this water, consecrated by my cord, be accepted by the men of my race who have left no sons.’
“With this prayer the morning service ends. Now, remember that this worship is daily, that these formulas must be pronounced, these movements of the hands made with mechanical precision; that if the worshipper forgets one of the incarnations of Vishnu which he is to figure with his fingers, if he stop his left nostril when it should be the right, the entire ceremony loses its efficacy; that, not to go astray amid this multitude of words and gestures required for each rite, he is obliged to use mnemotechnic methods; that there are five of these for each series of formulas; that his attention always strained and always directed toward the externals of the cult, does not leave his mind a moment in which to reflect upon the profound meaning of some of these prayers, and you will comprehend the extraordinary scene that the banks of the Ganges at Benāres present every morning; this anxious and demented multitude, these gestures, eager and yet methodical, this rapid movement of the lips, the fixed gaze of these men and women who, standing in the water, seem not even to see their neighbours, and count mentally like men in the delirium of a fever. Remember that there are ceremonies like these in the afternoon and also in the evening, and that in the intervals, in the street, in the house at meals, when going to bed, similar rites no less minute pursue the Brāhman, all preceded by the exercises of respiration, the enunciation of the syllable OM, and the invocation of the principal gods. It is estimated that between daybreak and noon he has scarcely an hour of rest from the performance of these rites. After the great powers of nature, the Ganges, the Dawn, and the Sun, he goes to worship in their temples the representations of divinity, the sacred trees, finally the cows, to whom he offers flowers. In his own dwelling other divinities await him, five black stones,[21] representing Siva, Ganesa, Surya, Devi and Vishnu, arranged according to the cardinal points: one towards the north, a second to the south-east, a third to the south-west, a fourth to the north-west, and one in the centre, this order changing according as the worshipper regards one god or another as most important; then there is a shell, a bell—to which, kneeling, he offers flowers—and, lastly, a vase, whose mouth contains Vishnu, the neck Rudra, the paunch Brahma, while at the bottom repose the three divine mothers, the Ganges, the Indus, and the Jumna.
Brāhman worshipping his household gods.
“This is the daily cult of the Brāhman of Benāres, and on holidays it is still further complicated. Since the great epoch of Brāhmanism it has remained the same. Some details may alter, but as a whole it has always been thus tyrannical and thus extravagant. As far back as the Upanishads appears the same faith in the power of articulate speech, the same imperative and innumerable prescriptions, the same singular formulas, the same enumeration of grotesque gestures. Every day, for more than twenty-five hundred years, since Buddhism was a protest against the tyranny and absurdity of rites, has this race mechanically passed through this machinery, resulting in what mental malformations, what habitual attitudes of mind and will, the race is now too different from ourselves for us to be able to conceive.”
Secular Brāhmans now, however, greatly abridge the length of their prayers, and an hour or an hour and a half in the morning suffices for the daily bath and purification, the worship of the household deities and the morning meal.